Atherosclerotic lesions preferentially develop in certain regions like bifurcations, branches, and bends. There are various systemic risk factors involved in atherogenesis, such as environmental, genetic, biologic, and biomechanical factors. Among the factors of stenosis size, blood viscosity, and flow rate, the size of the stenosis has the most significant effect on the spatial and temporal WSS distributions qualitatively and quantitatively.Ītherosclerosis is a disease of large- and medium-size arteries.

The lumen area near the inner wall distal to the stenosis region experienced a lower WSS during the entire cardiac cycle. The maximum WSS occurred at the proximal side of the stenosis, near the outer wall in the curved artery with no stenosis. The WSS distribution is highly non-uniform both temporally and spatially, especially in the stenotic region.

The computational results demonstrated that blood viscosity properties had considerable effect on the magnitude of the WSS, especially where disturbed flow was observed. Numerical simulations were performed to examine how the spatial and temporal WSS distributions are influenced by the stenosis size, blood viscosity, and flow rate. The objective of this work is to investigate the effect of non-Newtonian properties of blood on the wall shear stress (WSS) in atherosclerotic coronary arteries using both Newtonian and non-Newtonian models.

Blood on the wall